Hank wasn’t sure if she meant him.
Tom chuckled and took the next turn. Ahead, the wounded duck sagged where they left it, parked in front of the defunct and empty gas station. Whatever fuel supply this place had was long ago sucked dry by the hunters who called the EPS their home.
Tom eased the Subaru to a stop fifty feet in front of the broken-down heap of junk. It looked like the other salvage vehicles in the area, except it wasn’t rusted out, yet. Its front left wheel was missing, the whole thing on blocks of wood, the prow and sides riddled with bullet holes, the seats chewed up by bullets, too, the windshields shattered, the top canopy ripped and torn apart, and the frame above the pens broken in half and sagging under the weight of fresh snow. The only thing that appeared intact was the old cage that used to hold Penelope.
Every time Tom dragged him out here, Hank was reminded of how much that vehicle had gone through on his escape from Rock Island. At the time, and even in the days that followed while he and Doctor Wendy O’Farrell and Lieutenant Mason Jones crawled across the Quarantine Zone to reach the EPS, he hardly recognized how close his shave with death had been.
“Area seems clear,” Tom said as he turned off the engine.
The car chimed as Penelope threw open her door and rolled out of her seat. She walked out into the middle of the road and climbed onto the trunk of an old Buick. It groaned in protest, wailing a metallic urch as it sank under her weight.
Tom yanked the keys and dropped them on the driver’s seat before going around to open the hatchback to get his pack.
Hank pulled on his wool hat and approached the duck. He wasn’t worried about a biter sneaking up on him out here. Not in the middle of the day, out in the open like he was, and especially not with Penelope on guard. He walked up to the wooden plank he had screwed to the side of the duck and swatted at the snow covering it.
PROPERTY OF HANK OPLAND was written in big letters with several dates underneath it, all crossed out except for yesterday’s. He took a Sharpie out of his pocket and crossed out yesterday’s date, then wrote today’s.
Tom had asked him on the first day they came out to work on the duck why he did it.
“So no one steals everything,” Hank had told him. “If that date is a week old, fair game. Before that, you’re stealing.”
“That’s just wrong, man,” Tom had said, shaking his head.
Tom didn’t belong here.
Four
Hank lay on his belly, half on the deck of the duck, half in the engine well cowling in front of the shattered-out front windshield. He had enough daylight to see what he was doing for the most part, but shined a flashlight along the repaired radiator to check for leaks. The boys in the shop next to the kennels really came through with it. Too bad they couldn’t do anything for the air filter casing. That part was still on back order.
It was time to put the cooling fan belt back on anyway. They needed to run the engine a while and see what other nuts and bolts would rattle to the ground.
“Wrench,” Hank said, holding his hand in the air.
“Hang on,” Tom said from somewhere near where he sat on the cockpit frame.
“Hang on?” Hank lifted himself out of the engine well and glowered at the thin young man. Tom didn’t seem like much to look at. Just a college-aged kid with trouble growing a beard—clean shaven all the time, pale green eyes with a hint of tree bark in there, and short brown hair that wasn’t much of anything special.
Tom held a phone to his nose, tapping at its screen with his thumbs.
“Must be nice having a phone,” Hank grumbled, fishing an adjustable wrench out of the toolbox. He ran his thumb over the wheel to open it wider. “Except you never talk on it. Always just typing.”
“It’s called texting.”
“Texting. Typing. Whatever.”
“My brother wants to know why I’m not at home.”
Hank didn’t want to ask how Gary knew they weren’t on the EPS. The cock-weasel left on the morning tug, right after the alarms—probably scared shitless. If any of Senator Jefferson’s kids were his spitting image, that kid Gary was spot on. All fluff and talk, but his actions spoke in droves.
Penelope shot Tom a wary look. She was up on top of her old cage, crouched low like she was ready to spring up any moment. The damned girl never relaxed out here. Always looking this way and that, spinning around, sniffing the air. It made him a little nervous thinking that she might actually have the scent of something and she just wasn’t telling them.
She looked like a cute little Eskimo, though, in her fur-lined, hooded jacket and snow pants. A mean, hardened Eskimo, but cute.
Penelope belonged here.
In a way, he wished she didn’t because it was a damned shame. She was part of this place, and Hank trusted her sense of danger more than a laser trip-wire system. And since she didn’t like Tom’s brother much, he trusted her sense of people, too.
Hank leaned on his elbow. “Did you tell him?”
“Sure. Why not? He doesn’t care.”
“Cares enough to see you’re not at home,” Hank pointed out.
“Yup. We had this conversation,” Tom replied, not looking up from his phone.
“So how do you think he knows you’re not in your apartment, or on the EPS even?”
Tom shrugged. “Probably called to have me paged.”
“Probably monitoring the gate scans is more like it. I thought your card meant they have to block any record of your coming or going.”
“That’s his card. I’m under my mother’s name here. No one knows I’m the Senator’s son, remember?”
“Well, they all know he is. Walks around the place like a damned swinging dick, no offense.”
Tom shrugged again.
“I’m surprised he takes the tug. The way he acts, I expect him to take a chopper out like your dad.”
“We’re not supposed to do things like that. We’re supposed to act normal. No one likes to hate the kids of a Senator more than the press. They’re always looking for something to make us look bad so they can make him look bad.”
“Huh. I never thought of it like that,” Hank said, scratching at his graying beard. He didn’t like seeing himself in the mirror lately. His hair had turned silver these past few years…hell, maybe just this past month with all the action he’d seen.
“You never had to be the son of the next President of the United States.”
“Good thing, too. My old man was a jackass.”
“He’s asking if I’m alone. Says Dad’s worried about me after what happened to Larissa this morning.”
“Tell him you let her go into the wild again.”
Tom laughed, but it seemed disingenuous. It obviously still bothered him that his father blamed him for leaving Larissa behind at Midamerica. Going back for her had been costly, but at least it redeemed him some.
“No…I’m…with…Hank…on…duck…we…have…guns. No…one…is…going…to…bother…us. Dad…shouldn’t…worry. If…I…find…Larissa…I’ll…be…sure…to…call…you…immediately.”
“And typing is progress? How long did it take you to say all that?”
“I don’t have talk to my brother. That’s progress.”
Five
Hank sat on the nose of the duck with his feet dangling over the edge, wiping the last of the grease off his fingertips with a rag. Penelope paced the length of the deck beside the cages as Tom slid the toolbox under the bedframe in Penelope’s old pen to hide it. She stared into it as though it might gobble him up, like it was alive and could lunge out to grab her as well.
“Don’t worry, Penny,” Tom said as he swung the door of the cage open and closed. “It won’t lock without the key.”
His words didn’t comfort her any. She made a sign with her hand that seemed vulgar.
“So, do you really understand all her signs?”
Tom shrugged. “Mostly. It’s kind of like charades, except I figured out how she phrases her thoughts.”
Tom closed the door to the cage and took a small ring of keys from his pocket. He locked the cage and shook the door, making sure it was secure.
Penelope flinched at the iron clang that the gate lock housing made against the cage bars.
“You know this is just a waste of time, right?”
Tom shrugged again.
“If you want a rig for the Quarantine Zone, we should buy one of the ones in the EPS. I’ve talked to three different guys that are thinking about selling, quitting before your father shuts everything down. You wait until the day of the announcement and you can buy a dozen of them for the price of one!”
“I like this one. None of the others float.”
“Yeah, well, neither does this one. Not without patching all those holes. You’d have to be Moses to get this jalopy across anything.”
“Have faith, Hank.” Tom sat beside him and sighed. “Everything’s put away.”
Hank looked over his shoulder at Penelope. She had climbed back on top of the pen and was crouched low, looking down the length of the street, deeper into the Quarantine Zone. “You know,” he whispered. “For her sake, you should probably burn this thing. It may be therapeutic.”
Tom grinned. “The thought crossed my mind.”
“Kid, I can get her some papers. I can get her across.”
“She’s not ready.” Tom looked back at her as well. Penelope seemed to sense they were talking about her. Her head swung and her eyes met Tom’s, a suspicious squint settling in. “Besides, I want her going over like anyone else. She deserves that much.” Tom turned his stare on Hank. “It may be therapeutic.” He raised an eyebrow.
Hank chuckled. “Okay, kid. Come on, let’s head back to the EPS and see what’s going on. Maybe there’s news of Wendy and your sister.”
Penelope slid over the side of the duck and fell to the ground as Hank and Tom climbed down the back ladder. She loped ahead and stood watchful guard at the open passenger door of the Subaru until they got in.
“Anything out there today?” Hank asked Penelope as she dove into her seat and pulled the door closed softly.
She nodded and made several signs for Tom as he let the engine warm up.
“A couple coyotes or wild dogs were watching us from the woods,” Tom interpreted. “I think that’s what she said.”
Penelope nodded, holding up four fingers.
“Four of them, huh?”
She nodded again, breathing the word like a whisper, “Four.”
Tom spun the Subaru around and they cruised slowly along the cluttered, snow-packed street, taking the turn at the intersection to head back for the EPS. Other trails in the snow led off deeper into the Quarantine Zone, following the route the rig had taken earlier the same morning after abducting Tom’s sister Larissa and Doctor O’Farrell. Hank glowered in its direction. He should be out there looking. He knew the terrain. He knew the kinds of people that did this sort of thing—abducting people for ransom. For as much as Tom was certain his father was behind it, Hank wasn’t so sure. His instincts were telling him something wasn’t right, and since he used to deal with situations like this all the time, he was inclined to agree with the voice in his head telling him not to take things at face value.
Damn, Boston was a hundred years ago, though, or at least that’s how it felt. Mostly because his last job protecting Doctor Samuel Tate hadn’t gone too well. Son-of-a-bitch ended up in the hospital with a bullet in the back, on Hank’s watch no less. That kind of thing wasn’t supposed to happen…ever. That’s why people hired Hank in the first place. He took a bullet for a client once, but he’d never failed anyone until Tate.
That’s why Hank quit. He couldn’t tell if he was a liability. He had to take himself out of the equation, at least long enough to know for certain. Getting a zombie hunting license was just a stupid idea he came up with to build up his resume again. Failing to protect your last client doesn’t look good in an interview, but saying you trained to hunt zombies, now that was a differentiator.
It was only supposed to be for a season, maybe a year if he had trouble getting back into things, but when he got out here and saw how things really were, he couldn’t go back. Not when all the ass-clowns in D.C. couldn’t get it together and figure out what to do to help the millions of people trapped in the Quarantine Zone. They may have been zombified—biters being the favored term—but they were still people, and they needed help. Bringing them in one-by-one was better than sitting around waiting for them all to die.
Tom came to a stop at the next intersection where the old east-west highway ran. There was nothing on the road. The likelihood of running into anything here was so slim, the fact the Tom stopped made Hank look both ways just as Tom did, the kid leaning against his steering wheel. Trails led off through the snow both ways, carved by countless Jeeps that had gone off in search of Larissa and Wendy.
Tom sighed.
“Which way did you say they found the rig?”
Tom pointed behind them.
“It’s only fifteen minutes out of our way,” Hank offered. “I don’t have anything better to do if you want to—”
A thunderous BOOOOOOOM rolled through the woods from ahead of them, pouring over the Subaru so hard it shook the vehicle like an earthquake. Snow fell off the trees in clumps.
“What the hell was that?” It was rhetorical. Hank knew the answer. He knew where he was, he knew what was just ahead. The EPS. He knew it without even looking for the fireball through the trees.
“Shit!” Tom stomped on the gas and the Subaru’s tires began to spin in the snow. The tires thudded and grabbed from side to side, making the vehicle veer this way and that as it slowly climbed up onto the highway with its RPMs redlined. As soon as they were level, though, the Subaru surged them forward and the nose tipped down hard, lifting everyone out of their seats.
They plunged into a tunnel of overgrown trees with a bright light only a hundred feet away. Hank pointed at several large trees with blue paint running ten feet up their trunks.
“The gun line,” Hank warned. “Don’t forget the gun line.”
“I don’t think it’s going to matter,” Tom said through gritted teeth as they charged ahead. He honked his horn several times as they drove past the blue trees, though. In the summer, reflective blue paint was plainly visible across an eight-foot section of the road with the word STOP stenciled in red, a warning to anyone arriving to make themselves known. Everyone knew the rule. Stop and flash your lights and honk, then drive out slowly, otherwise risk being shot at to prevent unwanted vehicles from reaching the gates.
Tom honked again and they emerged from the canopy of trees. Smoke billowed into the sky from the south-east side of the building. There didn’t appear to be any fire, but most of the second and third floor windows were shattered even on this side of the building.
“Slow down,” Hank warned.
A fireball erupted at the north-east corner of the building, spitting a bulbous cloud that consumed three floors.
“Shit,” Tom said as he mashed the brakes.
BOOOOOOMMMM!
The shockwave hit them, rattling the vehicle as it spun to a sideways stop. Hank unlatched his belt and slid across the seat to look out the back window. High above, the huge jib arm and tower of the EPS crane began to tilt, bending in a slow collapse toward the forest. It twisted on one sturdy girder beam, grinding and chirping metallic cries as the arm dipped eastward, pulling the whole thing down. A loud snap! of the last structural support caused the rest of the jib and driver’s slewing unit to come crashing straight down over the roof of the EPS.
“Jesus Christ,” Hank breathed. The EPS was being destroyed before his very eyes, just like Biter’s Hill and Rock Island. He wanted to run, but he couldn’t help but watch.
The crane slammed down with another thunderous BOOOOMMM!
Six
Alarms wailed, bleating through the shut doors and windows of the Subaru. Smoke belched from beneath the building, pouring up from the pa
rking area in swirling, conical flurries that raced up its sides. Uprooted steel fence posts leaned outward, weighed down by the collapsed chain link fence. Even the four train cars had toppled over from the blast. Only the two massive engines had withstood the explosions.
Tom opened the door and stepped out.
Penelope reached for him, grabbing a part of his jacket, tugging at his sleeve in an effort to keep him from going anywhere. “No,” she moaned.
Even at this distance Hank could smell the smoke in the air.
Flames from the garage level danced freely, licking the shattered windows from below. Mist spilled from the fire suppression systems on every floor, washing the fire back and clearing the air of smoke, but not on the ground level.
“Tom,” Hank urged. “Come on, we need to clear out before they hit the ring.”
Hank didn’t know what kind of ordinance or systems the EPS used as its sentry ring, but he also didn’t want to stick around to find out. Biter’s Hill relied on hot tar and Apache helicopters to do the trick. Rock Island had its own cluster bomb silos aimed at itself. He could only imagine what kind of massive ordinance they had buried under the building, ready to crater the place at a moment’s notice.
Tom sat down in his seat again and closed the door. “We need to help.”
“Are you nuts? The sentry ring—”
“I disabled it,” Tom interrupted, turning the wheel of the Subaru to point them at the smoldering building.
“You did what? How?”
“With a circular saw. I cut the power cabling out.”
“Yeah, but….” Hank couldn’t think of the words. He looked for movement inside the fence line, wondering who could have survived the blast.
Penelope kept looking over at Tom, agitated by his decision.
“It’s okay,” Tom said.
“Who you talking to, me or her?”
“Both.”
“Well, that’s not okay,” Hank said, leaning forward to point out the front windshield. “Is there even any firefighting equipment on station?” Hank leaned back in his seat as Tom let the Subaru glide to a stop just outside the main gate. “I mean, what’s the point, right? When it gets this bad, their plan’s just to blow the place up anyway.”
The Angel Rise Zombie Retribution Experiment Page 2